Betrayal

The Reverend Mark Sorvillo cut an extravagant figure—dining at expensive restaurants, shopping at luxury stores. It took a sting to prove he was stealing from his parishioners

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Mark Sorvillo is a historian as well as a priest. He earned his graduate degree in church history at the University of Chicago, and he loved to talk to people, including this reporter for a 2005 Chicago magazine story about the history of the city's parishes. St. Margaret Mary was founded in 1921 by the Luxembourg and Irish families who lived in West Rogers Park. They envisioned a parish that would be woven into the fabric of their everyday lives—not a show-place church like St. Jerome in East Rogers Park. The first building, at 7318 North Oakley Avenue, is now the school. Then came the current church, in an Arts and Crafts style, at 2324 West Chase Avenue. In the 1980s, a parish assembly hall was built on one of the school's blacktop playgrounds. The parish has always been one of fierce loyalties. Generations of families have gone to church there, have sent their children and grandchildren to school there. And underestimating that loyalty was a large part of Sorvillo's undoing.

Sorvillo grew up in Westchester, Illinois; his father died when Sorvillo was young, and his mother raised him and his sister, Kathy, by herself. As an undergraduate, he attended the University of Notre Dame. Physically, he was hard to overlook: six feet five inches tall and, by the time he was ordained at Holy Name Cathedral in 1978, more than 300 pounds. Those being ordained wear red, and a fellow priest teased Sorvillo that day, calling him "the fattest tomato" at the altar. "He was always a very intelligent guy," says John M. Collins, the pastor of St. Joachim on the city's South Side, who became friends with Sorvillo while they were in the seminary together. "And for many years, he was a good priest. But who knows what happens in someone's life to make him go off track and do something like this?"

"He has said he did it—that's what pleading guilty means—and he accepts his punishment," says Brian Collins, Sorvillo's lawyer. "Other than that, there is nothing to say."

Sorvillo completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago. His thesis was on the Chicago bishop Bernard Sheil and the founding of the Catholic Youth Organization in 1930. He worked as an associate pastor at parishes in Buffalo Grove and on the West Side of Chicago. He wrote occasional reviews of church history books for Catholic publications, and in 1993 his letter to the editor about the growing scandal of priest abuse was published in the Chicago Sun-Times. "It is our responsibility to set a high moral standard for the people of God," Sorvillo wrote. "When any priest fails in this duty, it reflects negatively upon the entire presbyterate."

In July 1994, Sorvillo was appointed the pastor of St. Margaret Mary. For the first time, he had a parish of his own. "He was very articulate, very informed," says the parishioner Tim Murtaugh. "He could talk about architecture, opera, theatre, and traveling." And he had sophisticated tastes in food and wine. But his sermons left many people uninspired, and, according to Peggy Cunniff, the school board president, "he lacked an interest in many family activities. You never saw him at softball or basketball games." In fact, parishioners soon noted that they rarely saw him in his rectory office. Instead, he met with members of the school board in the pastor's residence, which he had appointed with Tobyware jugs, comfortable chairs, and a massive book collection.

Before Sorvillo's arrival, there had never been a parish credit card. He immediately signed up for parish cards from Visa, American Express, Marshall Field's, and Neiman Marcus. He also told the finance committee that the rectory kitchen needed to be renovated. "We wanted to make him happy," says McGuire. "But we also knew that the school needed new windows." The finance committee budgeted $10,000 to $15,000 for the kitchen renovation. Then Sorvillo signed a contract for a $60,000 rehab.

In the Archdiocese of Chicago, a parish finance committee is only an advisory group to the pastor. Members of the committee are volunteers who have no check-signing or bank-account privileges. Those privileges belong to the pastor. "And it used to be that the pastor ruled with an iron hand," says McGuire. "In recent years, the archdiocese has said that the finance committee has more oversight responsibility."

Brennan, the archdiocese's finance director, says that the fiscal oversight of a parish is a delicate balancing act. "It's not run like a nonprofit, with a board of directors voting on all decisions," he explains. "The pastor is, in effect, the chief executive officer of the parish. He makes the final decisions." But starting in 2005, the archdiocese began supplying a system of safety nets for parishioners. These include the use of tamper-evident sealed bank bags for weekly collections, a codified system for handling weekly collections, and the oversight of parish finance committees as part of the diocese's audit of parishes. The archdiocese's Web site now includes an ethics e-mail system, and anyone can report suspicions about a parish's financial situtation. "Any potential problem has someone from our office looking at the parish books within a week," Brennan says.

But some of these changes came too late for St. Margaret Mary and its renegade pastor. "We could complain," McGuire says, "but we had no power to stop him."

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This article appears in the December 2007 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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